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00:00Britain's cathedrals. Majestic, magnificent, monumental.
00:07For more than 1400 years, they've dominated Britain's landscape.
00:12Never out of sight, never out of mind.
00:15Epic structures, they represent our history and the changing fortunes of a nation.
00:22I'm Tony Robinson, and in this series,
00:25I'll be exploring six of Britain's greatest cathedrals.
00:34What a privilege.
00:36Their stories of rivalry and royalty.
00:39Henry was determined to strip the church of its power,
00:43of struggles and sacrifice.
00:47Who will rid me of this troublesome priest of martyrs and murder?
00:53And then they just hacked him down right on the spot.
00:56Containing more than 1,000 years of history,
00:59I'll discover how these buildings were constructed.
01:03Isn't that extraordinary?
01:05How they've evolved and what secrets they hold.
01:16Salisbury Cathedral.
01:18Built in 1220, its most striking feature, the spire at 404 feet,
01:24is the tallest of any church in Britain.
01:27Nearly 800 years old, the cathedral looks much as it did when first constructed.
01:33The world's finest example of early English Gothic architecture.
01:38It's witnessed natural disasters, royal feuds and secret war operations.
01:45Salisbury Cathedral has been at the forefront of breathtaking innovations,
01:51and it's been at the heart of events that have helped shape Britain.
01:55One of the first things you notice about this magnificent building
01:59is that it's surrounded by all this green space.
02:0280 acres of it, in fact.
02:05The vast walled area is called a cathedral close,
02:09and Salisbury has the largest in the country.
02:14Right in the middle is the building itself.
02:17At 442 feet, or nearly 135 metres,
02:21it is, like most British cathedrals, designed in the shape of a cross.
02:26With its public areas, including the main entrance and nave at the western end,
02:32and areas devoted to the clergy, the choir, bishop's throne and altar in the eastern end.
02:40The cross shape provides more than mere religious symbolism.
02:44It gives these massive buildings their immense strength.
02:48This one supports all 6,500 tonnes of the colossal tower and spire.
02:55Inside, it seems much more spacious than a lot of other cathedrals.
02:59From the main door here, look, I can see all the way down to the high altar and beyond.
03:07Drastic renovations over the centuries have removed many of the internal features,
03:13including the screen that once separated the public from the clergy.
03:19It makes the interior seem really open plan,
03:23with light blazing in unobstructed through these immense windows.
03:28Nothing's in darkness.
03:30The tombs and the statues and the flags are all lying there on display
03:36as you wander through this massive pillar-lined boulevard.
03:44And centre stage is this incredible font.
03:47It's not just tucked away somewhere for ceremonies.
03:50It's right in the middle of huge, liquid work of art.
04:01This mighty church was built in the 13th century by Bishop Richard Paw.
04:11What's so surprising, though, is that before it was sited here,
04:15it was constructed somewhere else altogether.
04:18And how it got here and how the city was arranged around it
04:22is the story of one of medieval England's biggest engineering projects.
04:28The cathedral was originally located more than two miles away,
04:32on an Iron Age hillfort called Old Sarum.
04:37Constructed in 1092, you can still see its foundations from the air,
04:42along with the remains of the mighty Norman castle
04:45that stood atop the hill next to it.
04:49There was a big wall all the way along that lip there.
04:53Look, you can just see remnants of it.
04:55And that wall was controlled by the military,
04:58which meant that the clergy at the cathedral couldn't come and go as they wished.
05:03Sometimes they'd come back at night and, bang, the doors were shut
05:06and they couldn't get back in, which, as you can imagine,
05:09led to repeated clashes with the soldiers.
05:13For Bishop Paw, this was intolerable.
05:16He was determined to move the cathedral to a new location.
05:21Legend has it that Bishop Paw decided on where the new cathedral would be built
05:26by firing an arrow into the air, and wherever it landed would be the new site.
05:32But the arrow stuck into the side of a deer,
05:35which raced along in that direction for a couple of miles
05:39before it collapsed and died.
05:41So that's where they put up the new cathedral.
05:44Now, it just so happened that that land was owned by a bishop.
05:48But I'm sure that had absolutely nothing to do with it.
05:52There are some 20,000 ancient documents in Salisbury Cathedral's library,
05:58and I've been given very rare access to an 800-year-old book
06:02that lists all the other reasons why the clergy wanted to move from Old Sarum.
06:08There were several grievances they had.
06:10First of all, they didn't like the fact that the water was in short supply.
06:15Also, they didn't have enough space up there.
06:17They wanted more space to build their houses, to have their processions.
06:22But the bishop couldn't move a cathedral
06:24without the agreement of one man, Pope Honorius III.
06:29After sending his representative to the cathedral to investigate,
06:33in 1219, he delivered his verdict.
06:36This is a particularly key document here.
06:38This is the copy of the papal bull, which was issued by the pope,
06:42giving the cathedral permission to move.
06:45What reason could it have been for locating it on this site?
06:50So, up in Old Sarum, they were in very cramped quarters.
06:54Down here, lots of water, big space.
06:56You can build a great big cathedral here,
06:58but you can't build a big cathedral up here,
07:00because it would be too crowded.
07:02Down here, lots of water, big space.
07:04You can build a great big cathedral and lots of big houses
07:07and make a real statement.
07:10Site chosen, planning permission given,
07:12the bishop could now start his epic engineering project
07:16to build not only a new cathedral, but also establish an entire city.
07:22This was a mammoth undertaking,
07:24one which would be expensive in money, materials and lives.
07:33Salisbury Cathedral stands at the heart of a city of more than 45,000 people.
07:39But there was a time when Salisbury didn't exist,
07:42and this cathedral was located somewhere else entirely.
07:46How it came to be here
07:48is one of the most daring engineering projects of the Middle Ages.
07:53Inside the cathedral is a window that commemorates the moment it all started.
07:59The foundation stone being laid by Bishop Richard Pawe
08:03on the 28th of April 1220.
08:06The project caused great excitement,
08:09with the great and the good clamouring to be involved.
08:12Even King Henry III, who owned a palace nearby,
08:16offered to help out with the building materials,
08:18the most important of which was oak.
08:21The roof itself would need 3,000 tonnes of timber.
08:25That's equal to the size of 90 football pitches.
08:30Vast quantities of other materials were needed,
08:33including 10,000 tonnes of Purbeck marble,
08:36450 tonnes of lead,
08:39and then there was the stone.
08:43Some of this came from the cathedral in Old Sarum,
08:46which was demolished and recycled,
08:48and the rest had to be quarried.
08:51This is Upper Jurassic limestone,
08:53and that bit probably weighs about 4.5 tonnes.
08:56It comes from about 10 miles away.
08:59Imagine the effort that goes into transporting that.
09:03And, of course, in the Middle Ages,
09:05they didn't have forklifts and articulated vehicles and stuff.
09:09Transport would have been about carts and oxen,
09:14and yet they managed to bring
09:16about 60,000 one-tonne pieces onto this site.
09:23But getting these stones to the location
09:26was only the start of a truly Herculean task.
09:31This model of the cathedral under construction
09:34gives us an artist's impression of the scale of the challenge,
09:37with an army of labourers and craftsmen working on the project.
09:45Imagine the din, all these horses and oxen
09:49bringing in the various materials.
09:52Around here, you've got the various trades operating.
09:56You've got a lime kiln here,
10:00the blacksmith's shop,
10:02masons trimming the stone.
10:05Originally, the cathedral consisted of just a tower
10:08with a small pyramid-style roof.
10:10The famous spire was to come over 50 years later.
10:15There wasn't much health and safety here, was there?
10:18No hard hats.
10:20These blokes are all that rudimentary scaffolding.
10:24And rather unnervingly, over here,
10:28you've got this little cemetery,
10:31a freshly dug grave there.
10:34I bet that wasn't an uncommon occurrence.
10:41The site, close to the River Avon,
10:44also presented the engineers with a particular challenge.
10:49This, believe it or not, is a dipstick.
10:53And this is a hole that leads right down
10:57to and beyond the foundations.
11:00And if I dip the dipstick in the hole,
11:06you'll see there is water right up to here.
11:11And that is because this whole cathedral was built on a marsh.
11:19This meant that despite the cathedral's massive size,
11:23the foundations couldn't be dug very deep.
11:26In fact, they go down a mere four feet,
11:28three times shallower than they should be.
11:31So how does the building remain stable?
11:37The cathedral's built on a water-saturated gravel bed
11:42that amazingly bears its entire weight.
11:45It's like when you're walking along the sand,
11:48if it's dry, then your foot tends to sink,
11:51but if it's wet, then it hardly sinks at all.
11:54It just sort of floats on the sand.
11:56And the same principle is at play here.
11:59It demonstrates the incredible ingenuity of the medieval builders,
12:04and nearly 800 years later, it's still here.
12:08And during that time, it's hardly changed at all.
12:12This cathedral took only 38 years to build,
12:16but that wasn't the only challenge that Bishop Poor took on.
12:20He also laid out plans for an entire city
12:24with the magnificent cathedral as its focal point.
12:28Originally called New Sarum,
12:31Salisbury grew up quickly around the grid system that Poor designed.
12:35First came the construction workers,
12:38then came people from Old Sarum who liked the look of their new neighbour.
12:43By the 14th century, it had become the largest settlement in Wiltshire.
12:49The jewel in the crown of this new city was the cathedral close,
12:53the land surrounding the church,
12:55which, at an immense 80 acres,
12:57remains the largest of any cathedral in Britain.
13:02It was this wall's precinct that separated the cathedral and its clergy
13:07from the rest of the city.
13:09It soon became a very desirable place to live in,
13:12provided you had the means and the connections to get inside.
13:19Even today, the properties within the cathedral close
13:22are exclusive and expensive.
13:26Take this one, Malmesbury House,
13:29a nine-bedroom mansion originally built in 1416,
13:33although when it went on the market in 2014,
13:36it was for £5 million.
13:39And if you think that makes it fit for a king, well, you'd be right,
13:43because in the summer of 1665, King Charles II moved here.
13:48Why? Because he was fleeing one of the greatest natural disasters
13:52that Britain had ever known.
13:57In April that year,
13:59the first cases of bubonic plague appeared in London's Docklands.
14:03Within weeks, it had torn through the entire city
14:07in what became known as the Great Plague,
14:10killing 100,000 people,
14:13nearly a quarter of London's population.
14:16Those with the money to do so fled,
14:19and that included King Charles II and his family.
14:23They headed straight for Salisbury and its cathedral close,
14:27which was not only plague-free,
14:29but also where Malmesbury House awaited them.
14:32Even now you can see why this place was deemed suitable for a king.
14:36It's elegant, it's very homely,
14:39lovely plasterwork,
14:41it's got everything that a travelling monarch might need.
14:48This is the King Charles II room.
14:51It's very small, it's hard to believe he would have actually slept in here.
14:55It's got this Buddhist shrine here now,
14:58which I don't think he'd have used,
15:00but it does have this aureole window...
15:04..from which he could address his subjects
15:06without leaving the comforts of his house.
15:13If he'd chosen to venture outside,
15:15the cathedral close had much to offer.
15:18He could always visit his neighbours,
15:20who were wealthy or members of the clergy,
15:23or probably both.
15:25And if he wanted a walk or to exercise his hunting dogs,
15:29there were the acres of lawn in front of the cathedral.
15:34Finally, and perhaps most importantly,
15:37there was the gated and guarded wall round the close.
15:40Very important for a monarch who needed to be kept away from city dwellers
15:44who might be infected by the disease.
15:48But the plague was getting closer and closer.
15:52In September 1665, a couple of cases were reported in Salisbury,
15:57and the King decided the risk was too great.
16:01Charles packed up his court and his family and headed off for Oxford.
16:07After the royal party left,
16:09those remaining inside Cathedral Close
16:12shut the gates to keep the disease out.
16:15To no avail.
16:17Nowhere was safe, even here in Salisbury.
16:21By the spring of 1666,
16:24the great plague had ravaged the entire city,
16:27killing one in ten of its residents.
16:32Salisbury and royalty.
16:35It's a story that continues throughout the ages.
16:38And one royal never escaped.
16:41And one royal never escaped.
16:44She's still here 400 years later,
16:47lying next to her husband,
16:49players in a tragic love story.
16:55A lot of people will have heard of Lady Jane Grey,
16:58who was Queen of England for just nine days,
17:01but not so many will have heard of her sister Catherine,
17:05who is buried here and whose story is just as remarkable.
17:10Catherine was first in line to the throne on three separate occasions,
17:15although, unlike her ill-fated sister, she was never crowned.
17:19But the story of the two sisters
17:22reveals so much about the intrigues that took place in the Tudor court.
17:30Catherine first became heir to the throne
17:32when her teenage sister Jane was made Queen in 1553.
17:37But Jane was quickly ousted by Mary I, daughter of Henry VIII,
17:42who imprisoned her in the tower, then ordered her execution.
17:48Although she was known as Bloody Mary,
17:50she may have had a softer side
17:52because she seems to have taken to Jane's sister Catherine,
17:56and because she had no children of her own,
17:58considered Catherine to be next in line to the throne
18:02for the second time.
18:05But once again, it wasn't to be.
18:08Bloody Mary died at the age of 42.
18:11On her deathbed, she recognised her half-sister Elizabeth
18:15as her rightful heir to the throne.
18:19Elizabeth remained unmarried and childless throughout her reign,
18:23so the question was, who would succeed her on her death?
18:27Elizabeth looked to her younger cousin,
18:30who happened to be Lady Catherine Grey.
18:33So for the third time, Catherine was considered heir to the throne.
18:40But then everything changed.
18:42Catherine fell in love with a noble named Edward Seymour.
18:47She became pregnant and they married in secret.
18:51When Elizabeth found out, she flew into a rage,
18:54accusing Catherine of marrying without her consent.
18:58She banished Edward overseas
19:00and forced Catherine to be locked in the Tower,
19:03where she gave birth to a son.
19:08Edward later returned to England and was also imprisoned in the Tower.
19:13Despite being behind bars, the couple managed to reunite,
19:16and Catherine soon felt pregnant again.
19:19When Queen Elizabeth heard the news, she was angrier than ever.
19:23How dare the couple defy her
19:25by turning the Tower of London into a love nest?
19:29Instead of repelling the marriage,
19:31which meant that neither of the children could ever lay claim to the throne,
19:35she ordered Edward never to see Lady Catherine ever again.
19:40Although released from the Tower, Catherine was placed under house arrest.
19:45She never saw Edward again and died five years later, aged just 27.
19:51Officially, she died from TB,
19:53but many believe that it was from a broken heart.
19:57She was brought to Salisbury Cathedral to lay alongside her husband.
20:03Here, Catherine was reunited with Edward, the love of her life,
20:08the man that she'd sacrificed everything for.
20:11Her body lies slightly higher than his in recognition of her royal status,
20:17a status I'm sure she would happily have given up
20:21if she'd known they could be together in life,
20:24as they are now, in death.
20:28Just a century after the deaths of Catherine and Edward,
20:33the cathedral came under serious threat.
20:36Its famous spire began crushing everything beneath it,
20:41and the entire structure was in danger of tumbling down.
20:49Every year, Salisbury Cathedral attracts hundreds of thousands of tourists,
20:55all drawn to its incredible 13th-century architecture
20:59and its majestic spire.
21:03This soaring pinnacle is one of the few features added
21:07after the cathedral was built.
21:09Completed sometime between 1310 and 1330,
21:13it's a masterpiece of medieval engineering,
21:16towering over the city to this day.
21:19The tower actually is big, more than 80 feet taller than Big Ben,
21:24and until 1964, when the post office tower was put up in London,
21:29it was the biggest building in Britain.
21:31So how come they could build that in the Middle Ages?
21:35Well, they did have a head start.
21:38The cathedral originally had a 120-foot tower,
21:42complete with a small pyramid-shaped roof.
21:45When the time came for the spire,
21:47they extended the tower to 224 feet and built it on top.
21:52To see how, I'm climbing up the stairs inside the tower.
21:56All 332 of them.
22:02Right.
22:04Well...
22:06Where I am now is where the top of the tower would originally have been.
22:12But what I find particularly interesting about all this is the ironwork.
22:17Look, there's two sorts.
22:19There's this big chunky stuff, and that was put in in the 1860s,
22:23but the thin stuff that's almost spindly
22:26comes from, believe it or not, the 1320s,
22:30and this was installed when they were putting the spire up.
22:34It had two functions.
22:36First of all, it binds all the stonework together,
22:38but secondly, it takes the weight,
22:41the massive weight of this new spire,
22:44which is bearing downwards.
22:48This medieval ironwork had to support an extension to the tower,
22:53rising an additional 104 feet,
22:56where the base of the octagonal spire sits.
23:01I'm now at the top of the tower,
23:04which is eight-sided.
23:07What I really want to show you is this view.
23:12Look at that structure.
23:15Isn't that extraordinary?
23:17There's 275 bits of wood creating this thing,
23:22which is half a support for the spire and half scaffolding.
23:27Absolutely glorious.
23:31This latticework wasn't part of the original construction.
23:36It was added around 1370
23:38to provide extra rigidity against strong winds.
23:42It's not connected to the spire at all.
23:45The wooden frame just kisses it.
23:48This massive spire was constructed to stand up all on its own
23:52without any help, which is particularly remarkable,
23:56given that it's made entirely out of these eight-inch thick blocks of stone.
24:01Almost as remarkable as the view from the outside.
24:05Look at this. It's incredible.
24:09Using solid stone instead of more lightweight wood and lead
24:13was a daring decision for the medieval masons,
24:16but it paid off because the stone endured.
24:20This is the tallest surviving ancient building anywhere in Britain.
24:26I'm 224 feet off the ground,
24:30and I'm only halfway up.
24:34This is as far as I'm allowed to go, though,
24:36but there is one chap who takes the heart-stopping trip
24:43to the top of the spire quite regularly,
24:46which means he has to go another 180 foot up there.
24:51Harder him than me.
24:54But why on earth would anyone need to go up there?
24:58You have to change the light bulbs,
25:00the warning lamps on top of the spire for low-flying aircraft.
25:03Because we're over 400 feet, we need them by law.
25:06How do you get to the top from here?
25:08Ten ladders will get you to this teeny little weather door here,
25:12and it's a three-foot-wide gap, and you need to climb out of there.
25:17That is the hardest bit, is getting out of that door,
25:20because you have to look down, grab a run and swing yourself round.
25:24You know, that is the hardest part, definitely.
25:27You climb up on bronze rungs that were put up there in the 1950s,
25:32and then you make yourself safe on the capstone at the top.
25:35Once you're up there, do you feel exhilarated or terrified,
25:39or is it just all in a day's work?
25:41It's a bit of both.
25:43You know, your heart is definitely in your mouth.
25:46Your senses are heightened,
25:48and when there's two or three of you on the capstone,
25:51you can feel it slightly swaying,
25:53and when you're stood on it next to the cross,
25:55you can't see the spire below you,
25:57so it actually feels like you're floating.
26:00Quite a surreal experience, really.
26:03When you go up there, you feel fairly wobbly,
26:06but you're using modern harnesses and stuff.
26:09Imagine what it must have been like for those medieval masons.
26:12I've got harnessed two ropes, lanyards, doubly safe.
26:16They wouldn't have had not even any rope around them.
26:19Kind of they're doing it for the glory of gold,
26:21and for sure, some people would have sadly died
26:24in the building of this spire.
26:26You know, there's no doubt about it, really.
26:34It took around 20 years to complete the spire.
26:37When finished, it was a wonder of the medieval world.
26:41But although it was tall, there was one thing missing,
26:44something you might expect on a spire this important.
26:47Bells.
26:51That's because Salisbury Cathedral had a freestanding bell tower
26:56that stood right here, away from the cathedral, in the close.
27:03Church bells were first used in the 5th century
27:06to signal the start of services.
27:09But they also served a wider purpose.
27:11In an age where there were no clocks,
27:13the church was everyone's timekeeper.
27:16As the custodians of time for the whole of society,
27:20it was vital that the clergy got the time right.
27:23They used a variety of devices to do this.
27:26Sundials, hourglasses, candles,
27:30sometimes a combination of all three.
27:34Sadly, Salisbury's elegant bell tower was damaged during the Civil War
27:39and later demolished in the 18th century.
27:42Housed in the cathedral's nave is the only surviving part,
27:46the world's oldest working mechanical clock,
27:49built in 1386.
27:52Now, there are no hands on this device and no face,
27:56so how does it tell the time?
28:00All it was intended for was just to strike the hour
28:03so that the cathedral clergy knew the time
28:06in which they had to be in here for their services.
28:08And the key ones during the day had to be at three-hourly intervals.
28:12Can you show me how it works? Yes, of course you can.
28:15Every morning, you have to wind the clock up
28:18and you would turn this handle,
28:20and if you can look up there, there is a weight.
28:23The weight is what controls the actual mechanism of the clock.
28:28Over the course of the day, the weight gradually descends,
28:32slowly turning the mechanism as it does so.
28:35Every hour, it causes this lever to rise
28:39and a system of chains and pulleys rings a bell in the roof of the cathedral.
28:45BELL RINGS
28:50This device represents true progress,
28:53because once it was introduced, people could measure time automatically.
28:58And the technological revolution it heralded
29:01meant that the church started to lose some of its power.
29:05Eventually, it wasn't the clergy who told the time, we all could.
29:11Soon, faces and hands appeared,
29:14allowing us to track not only hours, but minutes and seconds.
29:19Gradually, clocks became a feature on public buildings
29:22and eventually in our homes.
29:26But then another invention came along that really did change the world.
29:31The watch, which appeared in Elizabethan England,
29:35made time lords of us all.
29:37It showed us how time was portable
29:40and we could organise our lives wherever we went.
29:48Not only is Salisbury Cathedral home to the world's oldest working clock,
29:53it's also home to one of the oldest church choirs in the world.
29:57For 900 years, the cathedral has echoed to the sound of their music.
30:03It's one of Britain's oldest, one of its most successful,
30:06one of its most really talented singers.
30:08They travel all over the world.
30:10But in order to join, you need more than a good voice.
30:14You have to be able to withstand the induction.
30:19Tonight, these boys are taking part in this unique and ancient ritual
30:24known as Bumping the Stone.
30:27New members are led to a stone block
30:29where two senior choir boys take their heads and...
30:33Well, see for yourself.
30:37We bump you across to Salisbury Cathedral
30:40according to ancient tradition.
30:42Jasper, we welcome you.
30:48No-one's quite sure how this tradition came about,
30:51but it's one they're determined to hold on to, however painful.
30:55We often say in sort of shorthand
30:57that Salisbury has the spire and the choir.
31:00But we have this architectural gem.
31:03But some of the music that our choirs sing today
31:06has been sung in this building for 700, 800 years.
31:13Salisbury's is one of the oldest professional cathedral choirs
31:17in the country.
31:19But far from being stuck in the past,
31:22it has a reputation for breaking boundaries.
31:28In 1991, Salisbury Cathedral,
31:31In 1991, Salisbury became the first English cathedral
31:35to get an all-girls choir.
31:37They're up there.
31:51Like the boys, these girls have to attend practice twice a day,
31:55every day.
31:58If a young person watching this wanted music as a career,
32:02do you think that coming to a cathedral school like yours
32:06would be as good as going the X Factor route or whatever?
32:10Being a cathedral chorister, you learn to read music,
32:13you learn to sight-read, you learn to play an instrument.
32:16I think that cathedral chorister is certainly an excellent way.
32:28Throughout history, Salisbury Cathedral has been a centre for innovation.
32:33An early example of English Gothic architecture,
32:37home to the world's oldest working mechanical clock,
32:41and the first all-girls choir.
32:44Its famous spire was also an innovation,
32:48being one of the first to be made from stone.
32:51But this bold choice of material
32:55has also put the whole cathedral in jeopardy.
33:01That's because the spire and the tower combined
33:04weigh a colossal 6,500 tonnes,
33:08which is far more than the cathedral structure below them
33:12was designed to support.
33:14If you look at those black pillars there,
33:17they actually bend out about ten inches
33:20just because they're taking so much strain.
33:23In the 16th century, the tower and spire
33:26were slowly crushing the cathedral beneath them,
33:29putting the entire building at risk of collapse.
33:32Only one man in Britain had the knowledge and expertise to save it.
33:37Our most famous ever architect, Christopher Wren.
33:41Amazingly, I've been allowed special access to his handwritten journal.
33:46In 1668, Wren hadn't been knighted yet,
33:49but he was considered one of the great architects of the world.
33:53At that time, he was really busy redesigning whole swathes of London
33:58after the Great Fire.
34:00But the powers that be at Salisbury pleaded with him
34:03to come down and help them save their spire.
34:06He did, and he did this full-scale structural survey.
34:12This is the original.
34:14The fact that the spire was leaning 27.5 inches to the south
34:19and 17 inches to the west,
34:22clearly a lot of important emergency work was going to have to be done.
34:27Wren's solution was simple but effective.
34:31He recommended adding new buttresses to shore up the tower
34:35and prevent further buckling,
34:37and a series of metal bands to be placed around the spire
34:41to provide added strength and rigidity.
34:45Wren's repairs held good for another 300 years,
34:49but in the 20th century, Salisbury Cathedral faced its biggest threat yet,
34:54the Luftwaffe, and once again, the risk of the spire collapsing.
35:01Salisbury Cathedral, home of the highest church spire in Britain,
35:06a 13th-century engineering masterpiece,
35:09fell to an imposing 404 feet above the city.
35:15But by the late 20th century,
35:17it had fallen into a dangerous state of disrepair.
35:23Time and the elements had taken their toll.
35:26The spire was in such bad condition, you could see through it.
35:30Many of the eight-inch-thick stone slabs
35:33had weathered down to a couple of inches.
35:36It was Prince Charles and Diana who came to the rescue.
35:40They launched a £6 million appeal to repair the spire,
35:44which culminated in a concert held in the cathedral close,
35:47headlined by Phil Collins.
35:58The fundraising was a great success,
36:01and in 1992, the work was completed.
36:04The hope is that, like Christopher Wren's repairs in the 17th century,
36:08they'll ensure the survival of the spire for at least another 300 years.
36:16Time and the elements are just two of the threats
36:19that Britain's cathedrals have faced.
36:22Third is war.
36:24In the 1940s, they were prime targets for Luftwaffe bombers.
36:29Many were damaged, and Coventry Cathedral was completely destroyed.
36:35Salisbury's cathedral was spared from such attacks,
36:39and unknown to Hitler,
36:41it played a vital part in turning the tide against the Nazis.
36:46In fact, this city was home to one of the biggest secret operations of the war,
36:51one that helped to save our most effective and iconic aircraft,
36:55and none of that would have been possible without Salisbury Cathedral.
37:01The German Blitz brought death and destruction to more than a dozen UK cities.
37:07To make it harder for the enemy pilots, the lights went out all over the country.
37:12But they still had other methods of finding their way.
37:16One way was to use recognisable landmarks,
37:20and they don't come much more obvious than Salisbury Cathedral spire,
37:24so rather than bomb it, the Luftwaffe used it as a navigational aid
37:29to guide their bombers through to targets in the south-west of England
37:34and beyond in the Midlands.
37:36Britain's defence against the Luftwaffe was made up of these,
37:40RAF Spitfires.
37:42Destroying them was the Nazis' number one aim.
37:46And the most effective way of achieving it
37:49was to bomb the factories that made them.
37:53Sure enough, they did.
37:55A bombing raid on Southampton in September 1940 left the plant in ruins.
38:01Hitler must have thought his greatest threat was eliminated, but he was wrong.
38:06The British knew the Germans had decided not to bomb Salisbury,
38:11so they secretly chose the city as a replacement centre for aircraft production.
38:17Workshops appeared in public buildings,
38:19barns and even garden sheds,
38:22many of which were within a stone's throw at the cathedral.
38:26And hundreds were recruited to work in them,
38:29including 17-year-old Joyce Hunt.
38:32It was so interesting, the work.
38:35Women had to become men and help with the war, which we did.
38:40Which part of the planes were you assembling?
38:43The wings.
38:46The wings.
38:48We worked in pairs.
38:50We had to go and get the plans of what we were doing.
38:53I loved my work.
38:55And you used to put the rivets in?
38:57Yes. Anything that had to be done.
39:00Can you put this together?
39:02We'd have a shot.
39:04One screw in, one Spitfire more in the war.
39:12When we heard those Spitfire engines, how proud we were.
39:18Very proud, and still are.
39:23The secret factories began manufacturing in December 1940,
39:27and by March 1941, the first Salisbury Spitfire took to the air.
39:34Salisbury was by far the most productive of all the secret building locations.
39:39It turned out between 2,000 and 2,500 Spitfires,
39:44virtually 10% of the entire fleet built during the war.
39:51And it was that fleet that beat off the Nazis,
39:54helped take the fight to the continent,
39:56and provided air cover for the D-Day landings.
40:00But if the Germans hadn't decided to spare Salisbury because of that spire,
40:05then the hidden factories would never have existed,
40:08and some of those planes might never have been built.
40:14The cathedral played a crucial role in an unforgettable victory.
40:19A victory that's commemorated in these beautiful stained glass windows,
40:23made to honour the service and sacrifice of those who fought in World War II.
40:32And this one here is dedicated to the Army Air Corps,
40:36which since its inception in 1957,
40:38have used the cathedral as their regimental church.
40:43On the 6th of July 2017,
40:46the Air Corps celebrated their 60th anniversary in the cathedral grounds.
40:52Leading the ceremony was its Colonel-in-Chief, Prince Charles,
40:56the man who'd come to Salisbury Spire's rescue back in the early 90s.
41:02For Charles, this day held a deep and personal significance.
41:07As the father of a former Army Air Corps pilot myself,
41:12I'm very much aware of the mixed emotions of pride and concern,
41:18and concern involved in your children
41:21embarking on helicopter training and operations.
41:26Charles' youngest son, Harry, trained as a pilot in the Army Air Corps
41:31at Middle Wallop, just outside of Salisbury.
41:34Once he achieved the rank of captain in 2012,
41:38he undertook combat operations in Afghanistan
41:41on board an Apache helicopter gunship.
41:48The 60th anniversary ceremony of the Air Corps
41:51culminated with them being awarded new colours.
41:54This is an honour that you can only receive from the King or the Queen,
41:59so getting it was a huge moment in the history of the Corps.
42:04Here in Salisbury, it was Prince Charles who handed over the flag
42:08awarded by his mother,
42:10at the end of a day that touched his own family as well as countless others.
42:20Throughout its long history,
42:22Salisbury Cathedral has been at the centre of life-changing events.
42:27The building is a monument to the ingenuity of medieval designers and craftsmen.
42:34It may be a place of ancient tradition, but it's also one of great innovation,
42:39with the Gothic architecture, the shallow foundations and the first clock
42:43all breaking new ground.
42:46And it's a place of great social change too,
42:49with the first all-girls choir.
42:51For 800 years, Salisbury Cathedral has been central to the life of this town
42:57and it's influenced the entire country.
43:21Salisbury Cathedral